Cardigans
by krasinskisaurus
Summary: Ever since they met, Simmons has made something of a habit of stealing Fitz's cardigans...
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I haven't written fic in a very long time so I'm kinda out of practice, but marathoning AOS in 3 days and falling head over heels with these delightful specimens along the way, motivated me out of the slump.**

**First in a series of drabbles (there'll probably be seven in total) - I hope it's okay! Thanks for reading :')**

* * *

'- And finally…Fitz, Simmons – you'll be working together.'

The boy coming towards Jemma is wearing a cardigan that is at least two sizes too big and he's oddly reminiscent of her childhood puppy. She smiles when he looks just as young and out of place as she does.

'Hi! I'm Jemma. Jemma Simmons,' she says warmly as he reaches her desk, hands in pockets and head determinedly staring down at his worn Converse. And then he looks up at the friendliest face he's ever seen and breaks into a shy smile.

'Um…Leopold Fitz. Or Leo Fitz. Or just Fitz. Yeah, please don't call me Leopold...'

At the sound of his thick, familiar accent, Jemma gives Fitz a wide smile and he counts her teeth in an effort to ignore the butterflies in his stomach.

'Fitz it is! Right, we better get started.'

Jemma has never had a best friend before but instinctively knows it must feel something like this: Fitz is the end of every sentence. He doesn't stare at her when she remembers the periodic table off by heart; he smiles. Fitz has spent most of his sixteen years as comic relief. But when he tells Simmons about the flying drones he spent two years inventing before accidentally crashing them into a bus, she doesn't laugh at him.

'Aww no, they're not broken: just think of the first law of thermodynamics! That no energy in the universe is created and…'

'- none is destroyed,' they say in unison, chuckling.

They stare at each other for a second too long and Simmons stops paying attention to the Bunsen burner, until…

The test tube shatters the moment and promptly decides to deposit its contents onto Simmons' jumper.

'Oh bugger! This has _never_ happened to me before. Actually… once. When I was five and wanted to see what would happen when I put potassium in the bath…'

Fitz watches her face redden as she scrubs her jumper clean with a mixture of fondness and amusement, before shrugging off his own cardigan and holding it out to her. 'Here, take this, you wally.'

'Oh, I couldn't! It's freezing in here.

'I'm from Scotland. This is like a summer day.'

She beams, closing her fingers over the soft wool. 'Thanks, Fitz.'

By the end of class, they have completed roughly ten experiments more than everybody else and still found time to discuss – at length – the premature cancellation of _Firefly_. After they pack up, Fitz watches her high ponytail swing out of the door with a slightly wistful smile, before she suddenly turns back.

'I don't know when I'll see you next, but please don't let me run off with this!' She gestures at the cardigan. 'Nice to meet you, Fitz!'

He sees her every day for the next five years. He never asks for it back.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thanks to everyone for the feedback and for reading in the first place. This update is a little meatier than the first - got a little carried away, I guess! This chapter is set in Fitzsimmons' first year at MIT (my headcanon has them meeting before Shield Academy so slightly AU) **

* * *

He's working on a miniature flying Tardis for Jemma's birthday when he hears her strained voice come through the dorm door.

'Fitz. Can I come in?'

Fitz drops the soldering iron in surprise and punctures a hole in the Tardis wall. Cursing under his breath, he frantically tosses a blanket over the top of his workstation and hurries to let her in.

'Since when do ya –' Simmons is standing in a puddle in his doorway, soaked to her skin and on the verge of tears '-ask… God, Jem! What on earth happened?'

'Let's just say it was a less gruesome version of Carrie. And I _think _I'm the cheerleading squad's new entertainment,' she says, finally giving way to the tears she's been holding onto for an hour.

Fitz has only seen Simmons cry once before and it involved the last Harry Potter book and a fair amount of awkward patting. But this time, he doesn't miss a beat before enveloping her into a warm hug, ignoring the water seeping through his cardigan.

'I have tea, I have dry clothes and I have Back to the Future. Which do you want first?'

Jemma breaks free of the hug to stare up at him, her heart melting a little when his eyebrow quirks up in confusion. 'What? You don't want to catch pneumonia if it's not for scientific research, right?'

The minute Jemma's settled on Fitz's bed in a pair of sweatpants and what she likes to call his Grumpy Planets T-shirt ('Negative Space'), the familiar strains of Belle and Sebastian start up on his record player and she feels lighter somehow.

'You wanna talk about it?' Fitz asks, handing her a mug of tea and sitting beside her. He's the only one she trusts to get the tea-to-milk ratio just right.

'Oh it's fine, really,' Jemma says, trying to sound upbeat but only managing the enthusiasm of a brick wall. 'I'm sorry for barging in like this: I know hazing is a regular occurrence at college. Only I'm not technically part of sorority, nor have I expressed any interest to be, really…'

'I'm so sorry. They only did it 'cause you're brilliant, you know.'

'Really, Fitz. We're at MIT; I think everyone's a bit brilliant.'

'No, you're more than that. It's like what my mum said after the fiftieth football had been kicked at my head: the one thing that bullies don't know how to respond to is kindness. And you're a bloody angel, Jemma. The minute they realise that they're never gonna get a reaction from you; when they realise that you'd probably smile at…Kim Jong-Il and try and empathise with him, they'll stop. That might not mean much right now, but just know: you're worth a million of them.'

Jemma gives the first real smile she's given all day and remembers in disbelief that she almost considered going back to her dorm instead of visiting Fitz. 'Thank you.'

'And you do realise that the only thing stopping them from becoming the first test subjects for the Night Night gun, is the disapproving look I'll get from you, right?'

Inexplicably, this is what makes her cry for the second time.

'Oh no, that wasn't meant to make you cry! God, I am not very good at this whole comforting thing, am I. If ever there were an indication that I should watch more Oprah and less Jeremy Kyle…'

Jemma laughs, shaking her head fervently, and Fitz's rambling eventually subsides. 'I don't know how you could be better.'

'But would you like a tissue? I can offer you Kleenex or…' – she just settles her head back on his shoulder – 'ah yes, a new brand: My Shoulder.'

Fitz puts his arm around her like clockwork and the butterflies in her stomach take on a new meaning. Jemma rarely lets herself indulge in these feelings; she refuses to notice how her heart flutters when he calls her name excitedly from across the lab; or the way her breath catches when his arm lightly grazes hers, but for once, Jemma doesn't pretend that it's just the wool of his cardigan that is soft and warm and _perfect_. She gives an involuntary shiver.

'You are so transparent,' Fitz sighs, bringing her back to the present. He reluctantly extracts himself from their embrace to take off his cardigan and put it around her shoulders, and Jemma laughs out of relief that, for once, she isn't actually transparent to him. 'I should just ask my mum to knit you one for Christmas.'

'Only if I get a Han Solo one to match your Chewbacca. Tell me, Fitz. What did spark the love of Star Wars related knitwear exactly?'

'Your funny bone's in tact, I see.' His face scrunches up in mock indignation and she giggles into his shoulder.

They stay like this for a while, the tea sitting forgotten on the floor, until Jemma exhales. She slides her hand across the bed until it meets his and she lets her fingers dance delicately over his knuckles. In an air-conditioned room, Fitz wonders why his hands are suddenly clammy.

'If coming here meant getting stick for being smart but also getting you,' she smiles. 'Well, I think I got rather lucky with my end of the bargain.'

It's not exactly what Jemma wants to say, but it's enough. The reality of how she feels about Fitz exists only in the shared silence and the fraction of space between their conjoined hands. It's delicate.

'And for the last time, we are _not_ calling it the 'Night Night' gun.'


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Big thanks again to everyone for reading and reviewing :D I really appreciate you all indulging my Fitzsimmons spiral :')**

**This chapter is still set in college, but a year later. Hope it's okay!**

* * *

Their first flat together is so cold and damp that Scotland feels agonisingly close for Fitz. He spends the winter evenings waiting for Simmons to finish teaching her night class, in the company of several unreliable electric heaters and a mysteriously dwindling supply of extra layers, until one night, all he can find is a tartan hat and scarf. Fitz reluctantly resorts to his duvet and a half-eaten tub of Ben & Jerry's (to test Simmons' theory that the fat content would warm him up), and by the time she comes through the door at nine o'clock sharp, he is shivering his way through a third episode of Doctor Who and absent-mindedly making her Tardis fly across the room.

"Honey, I'm home!" Simmons chuckles, before narrowly avoiding a collision with her own flying blue box. "Fitz, if you hit me with that one more time, I am demanding sole custody."

Looking up, she spots his duvet, the tub of ice cream and countless tissues strewn across the floor, and chokes down a laugh. "Who dumped you then, Bridget?"

"I'm just _cold_."

"Oh Fitz," and Simmons gives an affectionate sigh. "I'd have thought a Glasgow boy would be able to handle the cold better than most."

"I can't help that humans are not designed to withstand sub-zero temperatures without sufficient insulation!" He punctuates the sentence with a sneeze. "If only the ruddy landlord would let me sort the heating out – it would take five minut…"

"I think the day we waved goodbye to the chance of the landlord letting you do anything, was also the day you set fire to the kitchen."

"I was _trying_ to perfect the portable tri-vection toaster for a certain someone, who always complains that her bagels are too cold by the time she gets to class."

"And I am very grateful, but I didn't think that meant you were going to toast the entire flat! Hold on." Simmons drops her satchel in the doorway and rushes into her bedroom, only to return a few seconds later with a woolly cream jumper in hand. "Here, take this and stop moaning like you're sixty years older than you are."

"Hey, that's mine! Are you offering me my own sweaters now, ay?" he asks, sounding progressively more Scottish with every throb of the vein in his temple.

"I was cold at New Year's and you said I could take something from your wardrobe!"

"Jemma, you do realise that when people say 'you can wear my cardigan' or 'you can read my first edition copy of _A Brief History of Time_' or 'you can use my prototype X-ray vision goggles', they do not mean 'you can keep them forever and never give them back'. Are those –" he gestures wildly at her outfit "even your _real_ clothes? Or did a shop assistant once say that you could try them on?"

Simmons watches this display with somewhat wearied amusement. "Are you quite finished?"

"Yeah. I am actually," Fitz replies defiantly, making a point of putting on his cardigan in the angriest manner possible.

"Put a movie in then, and I'll be right back," Jemma says, disappearing into her room once more.

"It's Thursday – it's your day to pick," comes his disgruntled call after her.

"Wonderful! How about…_Frozen_?" she shouts from her bedroom.

"You're funny."

"Ooooh, I know. _Cold Mountain_!"

"No really, you're a regular Billy Connolly."

"You're being so fussy! I think we have _Ice Age_ in the cupboard somewhere."

"Talking of ice, you're skating on a _very _thin patch of it right now."

Jemma's delicate laugh echoes loudly down the corridor as she walks back into the lounge in a change of clothes. "Fine. I'll be serious."

But sure enough, her choice of film soon earns her a cushion blow to the head when the opening credits of _Frost/Nixon_ appear on the screen.

"Jemma Simmons, you are ridiculous," Fitz says, with an involuntary grin. "…But I actually really like this film so you've had a lucky escape."

Any lingering grumpiness he has, vanishes the moment Jemma turns around, with several strands of hair out of place and an impossibly wide smile. She is wearing a worn beige cardigan that is almost _definitely_ his, too, but somehow, it doesn't matter to him this time. Fitz opens the duvet up to allow her to sit beside him and she's there instantly, covers tucked under her chin. There is the whole sofa and yet, they're on one cushion, rubbing elbows again.

It takes Fitz ten minutes to break the contented silence. "Sorry for snapping earlier," he mutters and he means it.

"Don't be silly. How's your mum?"

Sometimes he wonders whether the psychic link everyone jokes about, might not actually be too far from the truth.

"She sounded a little better today. The doctor's given her some new antibiotics, but I should-"

"Be there?" Jemma finishes his sentence out of habit and he nods. "You will be soon: it'll be Christmas before you know it. Your mum would _never_ want you to feel guilty for being here, doing what you love. Besides, she's going to be absolutely fine, Fitz. I promise."

Jemma squeezes Fitz's hand and he knows she's right. She's always right.

"Look at us in matching cardigans. We couldn't look more like an old married couple if we tried."

He lets out a light chuckle that doesn't quite meet his eyes, desperately trying to ignore how cute she looks in a cardigan – in his cardigan – with the long sleeves teasing the tips of her fingers, millimetres away from his own. Fitz never thinks of it as his again; it looks much better on her anyway.


End file.
